Smartick Math – A Review
About a month ago we were given the opportunity to try out Smartick Math. As much as I like interest-led education and the idea of at least semi-unschooling I do like a bit of structure when it comes to math because I feel like it’s not as easy to be creative with math as it is with other subjects.
I figured Raeca would enjoy the program but I wasn’t sure that it would really give appropriate questions to Ephraim (who just turned 4), boy was I wrong!
Right from the first day they tried it they were both hooked.
Smartick is a little different than some other math programs because they give a 15-ish minute session instead of just letting kids answer as many questions as they want. The first day when Raeca wanted to do more than her allotted 15 minutes this kind of annoyed me, but then I realized that it helped her from getting burnt out on it and she actually looked forward to being able to do a little bit every day (this is the same girl that was crying and whining about having to do math nine months ago).
As the kids continue with the math more areas are unlocked and they collect “ticks” which are pretty much like coins and they can buy items for their house and things like pets in the shop. This was a huge motivator for Raeca who wanted to buy a cat.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how diverse and appropriate the math questions were for the kids. They were just difficult enough without overwhelming them.
For Ephraim I found that using the app on a tablet works better than the computer because he doesn’t really have the fine motor skills developed to use a laptop mouse properly yet but that was easy enough to work out. Or, if we were using the computer he’d just point to the answer and I would click on it.
The only thing I would like to see added to Smartick is a little introductory video before introducing a new concept, they do have tutorial areas you can go into after but when you are doing your set of questions sometimes something new will pop up and the kids weren’t sure how to answer it. Since I was sitting beside them this was fairly easily remedied but I think it would be nice to have some teaching prior to the questions.
All in all we’ve been having a lot of fun with Smartick, the kids have enjoyed doing math so much more with Smartick than with worksheets or even with other online math programs we’ve tried.
If you’d like to give Smartick a try you can click on any of the links in this post and you’ll get a 15 day trial and 25% off of a subscription if you decide to keep going with it.
I’d love to hear what your family thinks of Smartick!
Full Disclosure: We were given a free trial of Smartick in exchange for a review but everything I wrote here is absolutely honest and true.
